Greenpeace says clean energy future is possible with the right policy

More fossil fuel heartache or a clean energy future? That’s the question on many minds as the the BP oil spill spirals out of control in the Gulf of Mexico.

Wind farm (Photo: GreenRightNow)

And the answer is easy, according to a newly revised Greenpeace International report. It concludes that moving aggressively toward clean energy would add jobs to the energy sector overall, make energy more affordable — not more costly — stop the pollution and insulate local communities from wild fuel price fluctuations.

Created in collaboration with the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) the report contends that pulling out all the stops in the move toward a clean energy future would generate economic growth and maintains that the fears about switching off fossil fuels are trumped up scare tactics espoused by conventional energy companies. The report’s authors maintain that the move to renewables would not bring high electricity prices and electricity outages and other calamities that have been predicted.

In fact, they say, the opposite is true: The world would be more stable, cleaner and could avert economic shocks from declining fossil fuel supplies.

“Our Energy Revolution scenario shows how to eliminate unpredictable fossil fuel costs, destructive mining and oil exploration and with it catastrophes such as the current BP Gulf oil spill,” said Sven Teske, Greenpeace International’s Senior Energy Expert and co-author of the report.

“Investing in people, rather than dirty and dangerous fossil fuels not only boosts global economic development but stems catastrophic climate change.”

So what’s holding the world back? The Greenpeace analysis finds that the main barrier to change is the lack of a political will to push clean energy forward.

Technologically, the world is already capable, without advancements, of reaching a 95 percent clean energy future by 2050, according to the report.

“The 2010 Energy Revolution report outlines pathways towards a 100% renewable energy supply for the world. It demonstrates that there is no technological barrier to achieving this vision and reaping its many benefits in terms of the environment and jobs. The barrier is political. All that is now needed to set sustainable energy future for our planet is the political will,” said Christine Lins, Secretary General of the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC).

The report notes that getting to a renewable energy economy would require some transitional policies to make sure workers benefit economically. But those would not include more nuclear energy, which the authors see as diverting too many resources from the development of truly clean energy production, like wind and solar. The report also cites the dangers of nuclear proliferation and nuclear waste and dangerous accidents as arguments against taking a detour toward nuclear.

But the report finds that scaling up toward a sustainable energy economy could produce multiple benefits within the coming decades by:

Creating 12 million jobs – 8.5 million of them in renewable energy — by 2030.

Slowing global CO2 emissions so that they peak by 2015 and drop thereafter to be 80 percent lower by 2050 than carbon dioxide emissions in 1990 – a target that scientists says could help avoid cataclysmic climate change outcomes.